Robin­son III scores 20 points, Pac­ers dom­i­nate Nets

The In­di­ana Pac­ers knew they would need to reach deep into their bench Fri­day night in or­der to get a win.

With three play­ers sit­ting out due to in­juries — in­clud­ing Paul George, who is nurs­ing a sore left an­kle and a nag­ging back in­jury — In­di­ana not only re­lied on its depth, the Pac­ers used it to dis­man­tle the Nets 118-97, Brook­lyn’s sixth straight loss.

Eleven Pac­ers dressed Fri­day night, and nine played at least 18 min­utes. Glenn Robin­son III got his se­cond start of the sea­son and fin­ished with 20 points and five re­bounds.

“I just came in ready. I had the right mind­set. (Coach) Nate (McMil­lan) talked to me be­fore the game, told me I was start­ing, I was go­ing to play big min­utes,” Robin­son said. “I thought we brought the en­ergy. We were in­tense de­fen­sively. We’re just start­ing to get our chem­istry and we’ve just got to keep go­ing.”

Af­ter los­ing two of their last three games, the Pac­ers were in sync, click­ing and gelling on the court.

Fol­low­ing In­di­ana’s prac­tice on Thurs­day, George gath­ered the Pac­ers for a play­ers-only meet­ing, ad­dress­ing some of In­di­ana’s short­com­ings and kinks that needed worked out. Robin­son noted that the Pac­ers needed to gather and dis­cuss some of the prob­lems that have ham­pered a team that had a lot of pre­sea­son hype.

“For us, we have to es­tab­lish who we are. We need to es­tab­lish our iden­tity,” McMil­lan said. “Tonight, I thought they set the tone. We can’t go back. We’ve been up and down. We have to move for­ward and build off this game, have in­ten­sity on both ends of the floor.”

Af­ter an 11-0 Nets run in the first quar­ter, In­di­ana trailed by seven points. But the Pac­ers fin­ished the quar­ter with a 6-0 run to lead 28-23. Brook­lyn would pull within 39-35 dur­ing the se­cond quar­ter, but it was the clos­est they would come to chal­leng­ing In­di­ana.

The Pac­ers led by 15 points at half­time and stretched their lead to 30 in the third quar­ter with a 20-5 run. The Pac­ers led by as many as 31 points.

Trevor Booker fin­ished with 10 points and 10 re­bounds, record­ing his sixth dou­ble-dou­ble of the sea­son for the Nets while Brook Lopez fin­ished with 20 points and Sean Kilpatrick added 16 points and seven as­sists.

“I think it came down to com­pet­i­tive­ness. They out­worked us, and they were more fo­cused than us for the ma­jor­ity of the game,” Lopez said. “We were lax on both ends of the floor. We need to fight. We need to grind ev­ery pos­ses­sion to give our­selves a shot. The guys in the locker room right now are the ones that can fix it.”

TIP-INS:

Brook­lyn: The Nets are 0-5 in road games this sea­son when their op­po­nent scores more than 120 points. . Brook­lyn is 0-5 this sea­son when scor­ing less than 100 points. . Brook­lyn is 1-7 on the road this sea­son.

In­di­ana: George will sit out the next two games. CJ Miles and Kevin Seraphin sat out Fri­day night due to sore knees. . In­di­ana’s bench scored 48 points Fri­day night. . Through 16 games this sea­son, In­di­ana has av­er­aged 22.7 as­sists per game. The Pac­ers fin­ished with 25 as­sists Fri­day night. . The 21-point win was In­di­ana’s largest mar­gin of the sea­son. . In­di­ana’s 31-point lead was its largest in any game this sea­son.